Yet, no Power 5 football conference member has won an NCAA Division I Hockey men’s championship since Boston College in 2010. You know what school has: Union (N.Y) in 2014, while Quinnipiac (twice) and Ferris State have been to the championship game since 2012.

Hockey is the one revenue sport OU could legitimately compete with traditional athletic powers such as Michigan and Michigan State on a consistent basis.

Oakland’s men’s basketball program is one of the Top 50 in the nation entering this season. Attendance has been steady at the roughly 4,000-seat O’Rena.

The NHL, Red Wings, USA Hockey and everyone hockey-related is all for it. A news conference announcing a feasibility study regarding hockey at OU was held before a Red Wings’ game at Little Caesars Arena.

The Hockey News recently featured an article about it, highlighting OU’s possible varsity women’s Division I program. Currently, there are none in the State of Michigan.

Yet, from a practicality standpoint, doesn’t OU have enough issues with its perpetually skyrocketing tuition, its desperate need to retain a competent, scandal-free university president for an extended period and turning its existing athletic programs into Division I-caliber entities in regard to facilities, not just label?

Hockey is not cheap. It would mean funding and constructing an on-campus arena seating roughly 5,000 with at least a second sheet of ice. Wayne State’s biggest failing was not even coming close to getting a rink erected and playing out of local venues.

Men’s and women’s hockey at the Division I level means 36 full athletic scholarships combined.

It’s been a decade since Oakland added a sport (men’s and women’s track), so an expansion is understandable. However, it would seem lacrosse, one of the fastest-rising participation sports in the nation, would make more sense than hockey. Certainly it would be less costly.

According to local rink-operating sources, the number of registered hockey players in Michigan has remained steady at around 50,000 the past two decades. However, the percentage has declined significantly on the youth levels while rising for adults.

Where would funding for hockey at OU come from? Certainly they can’t be thinking about adding student fees.

“I understand the skepticism part, but there has been an enormous amount of interest generated by this, and there is a lot of potential, which could make sense bringing hockey to Oakland,” Konya said. “It’d be part of our growth.’’

Konya emphasized hockey would have to be self-sustaining and significant fundraising necessary to get if off the ground.

“We’re not going to have a rob Peter to pay Paul situation,” he said. “We would not end one athletic program to begin another, ether. It would be expansion of the athletic department.”

A hockey facility would provide, as well, revenue opportunities because of ice rental.

Oakland is largely a commuter school (84 percent of its undergraduate students live off campus, according to U.S. News and World Reports). Oakland and Macomb counties have long been rooted in the four major professional sports teams, and Michigan and Michigan State. They have only shown fleeting interest in other sports entities in the past.

And general public interest - and ticket sales - would be necessary to sustain Division I hockey at OU.

“Especially with the Pistons leaving The Palace, there is more demand than ever for local and affordable sports entertainment in Oakland and Macomb (counties),” Konya said. “There are roughly 1.8 million people who live within a relatively short drive of our campus.

“From a demographics standpoint, it makes sense.”

That’s a terrific point, and the reasonably successful independent minor league United Shore Professional Baseball League on the M-59 corridor in Utica provides evidence.

As for the viability of a new rink in this area for participatory reasons, it’s trying to sell a need that isn’t there.

There was a rink-building boon in Southeast Michigan during the 1990s and early 2000s, but it stopped with the Great Recession and the Red Wings’ decline.

You can make a case for a hole in the rink pattern in the Clarkston-Lake Orion-Oxford region between The Onyx in Rochester, Lakeland in Waterford, the multiple rinks in Southern Oakland County and Macomb County and Flint, but not necessarily where OU’s campus is located. If anything, the rink market is oversaturated.

A plus is Oakland and Macomb counties are hot beds for elite hockey talent with the likes of recent NHL first-round draft picks such Josh Norris (Oxford), Dylan Larkin (Waterford), Zach Werenski (Grosse Pointe) and Jacob Trouba (Rochester Hills). Those players all went to the USA Hockey Developmental program in Plymouth before Michigan, but there are many layers of high-end local talent, far more than in other sports. Macomb County’s Danny DeKeyser, a product of Western Michigan, takes a regular shift along the blue line for the Red Wings.

Winnipeg’s No. 1 goalie Connor Hellebuyck played at Walled Lake Northern High School, and Montreal defenseman Jeff Petry hails from Orchard Lake St. Mary’s. When North Dakota won the NCAA title in 2015, its goalie was Troy’s Cam Johnson. When the United States throttled Canada to win the World Junior Championship last year in Montreal, its goalie was Macomb County’s Tyler Parsons.

And that includes women’s hockey.

Perhaps the best defensemen in the world is Megan Keller (Boston College), a former standout in basketball and softball at North Farmington High School.

Oakland’s best chance for developing a legitimate marquee professional athlete or high-profile Olympian could come from hockey.

It’s one of those ideas everyone will say they love, and with good reason, but…then comes the reality of how to pay for it.

In a strong economy, I could see this flying. If the economy goes bad, well, it’ll turn out to be one of those ideas that sounded great in theory.

There is definitely reward, but it’d be egregious to minimize, and not cover for, the risk.

To put it in hockey terms, it’s not the tap in of a rebound, but rather an open corner from the slot.